Gardy nice experience and funny solution. Once I have a similar experience, while repairing a machine. I disassembled everything, rectified the problem and repaired. Still that time everything was under my control and done well. When I started reassembling, the confusion starts. Finally I found that some parts are screws are left over and I don't know where to be placed. Without that I switched on the machine and it works fine for some time. But later on found that some extra wear & tear, additional noises etc while operating the machine.

You would think they'd make a coin trap that was more accessible, somewhere where the non-fix-it could get access and empty it much like the lint trap. As the resident laundry person in my household, I can't tell you how many coins I collect (dollars too). My rule is the person doing the wash gets to keep the goods. I've found myself with a decent amount of play money over the years, which is why I don't whine too much about doing laundry!

Use a phone camera of digital camera to take photos as you disassemble. Then you have a record of what goes where. I use my phone camera to make a visual shopping list before I go to Lowe's and Home Depot.

there's is no way my wife would let me cut a hole in her washing machine! I've had the same problem with the coin catcher collecting guitar picks and coins. Since the debris belongs to me, I have to open the machine and get the junk out.

The negative reinforcement has worked in bringing the behavior to extinction. Dr. Skinner would be proud.

Well, maybe the coin trap was designed for ease of assembly, not for ease of servicing. That reminds me of cars where the engine must be dropped to change a spark plug. I like your decision to 'add' an access panel; maybe you will have to service the coin trap again ? Can you patent the modification and sell it to the manufacturer ?

Thanks, this story gave me a good laugh. Especially when the author decided to make an access hole with his saber saw. I agree with Glenn. And why the heck not? If my husband wants to cut an access hole in the washing machine so he can spend less time messing with it and more with me, I'd be a happy camper. Actually, I'm more likely to be the one that comes up with that idea, since stubborn machines and bad designs annoy me more.

Plenty cars have such bad access to engine parts that they feature new access doors from the first moment the owner (or shop) needs to do engine work such as spark plug changes, because the customer is not inclined to play the cost of an engine drop for minor service work like that.

Also I have taken to documenting re-assembly by taking pics with my cellphone so I can re-confirm wiring colors before turning everything back on.

I have never had issues with Ikea furniture, in fact my sports is to figure out how it goes together *before* looking at assembly instructions. Whether it is that I am also from Europe or because I like solving puzzles, I hardly every look at the instructions and typically find that their stuff is designed logically. Occasionally I will accept the gift of incorrect assembled new furniture for a small donation to friends and then re-assemble it correctly myself. I still have a nice bookcase that I obtained cheap that way.

I had the same error code and plugged pump screen on my 8 year old Whirlpool a few months ago.
On my model there were two screws at the bottom corners of the front kick panel below the door. I removed the two screws. Removed the kick panel and the screen assembly was right there. Then turned the bayonet style cover from the screen assembly, no hoses to remove.
I pulled a wad of lint the size of a small rat out of the screen. Replaced everything and it has run several months without problems.
I, too, am disappointed that there is no list of error codes, troubleshooting suggestions, or mention of this screen in the literature that came with the washer.
As an added bonus, a foul odor that came from the laundry room vanished when I cleaned the screen.

When we had a sensor replaced on a Kenmore front-load washer, the service man removed the lower front panel to reveal a plastic pocket with a service manual that listed all the error codes, diagnostics, etc. Maybe Sears figured most buyers were not smart enough to look through the manual, find the problem, and try to handle it themselves. Anyway, manuals with error codes do exist, but sometimes they are hard to find. Ours is now safely in an appliance folder.

You can also find these manuals online in many cases. You can find discussions of many of an appliance's problems in forums. I find that forums are often a better source to deal with a problem than a user manual.

Good point, Rob. I was pleasantly surprised that the Sears washing-machine manual found inside the machine had so much detail. Probably created more for service people than buyers. The service tech also had a tablet computer of some sort that let him view documents and manuals.

Yes, those manuals are all over the place online. However, I've found that the forums often go into greater detail -- as in "Watch your knuckle when you undo this screw." But more to the point, the forums will let you know when it's important to also replace another part when you go to fix the part that failed.

Rob, I've also found lots of info in the user forums, but it can take a long time of searching to find it. Usually, I'd much rather have the manual. William, thanks for that info on service people. Now it makes sense, although doesn't really ratchet down the annoyance value. I am boggled that people actually throw away papers they don't understand, or any papers that come with an appliance. I was taught to save and file everything.

Good point, Ann. Yet sometimes the forums come in handy. I bought a memory upgrade chip for my Toshiba laptop. As soon as I inserted it, the laptop started to crash. Of course, I thought I'd done something wrong. I went to the forums and found that everyone with this particular laptop was having the same problem with this particular memory upgrade. Who knows why they keep selling the upgrade. At any rate, it was the forums that validated my problem.

I agree, the forums are great for very specific problems that you want to know other users' experience with, like that new chip. They're especially good for electronics hardware and software. But for basic mechanical stuff, I prefer to find a manual.

Yes, manuals are often good. I recent replaced the side-view mirrors on my car (don't ask -- it has to do the kids), and I found very good instruction online. I can't imagine how I would have been able to do it without the online help.

Yes, Ann. I'm blaming my kids, but it was really my fault. I have a one-car garage that barely fits my minivan. Two different times my kids were fighting or rough-housing as I backed out of the garage. I tried to intervene while backing out. In one instance I nicked the right side-view mirror, in another, I nicked the left. You only have to nick the mirror slightly and it's destroyed.

I fixed the mirrors, hen I solved the problem by ignoring the kids completely when I back out of the garage.

I'm glad to hear your kids weren't strong enough to wrestle off the side-view mirrors, which is what my imagination conjured up when you blamed them. Sounds like your garage may have been built in the days before minivan and SUV widths.

Yes, cars a bigger than they used to be. In and out of the garage, I had just a couple inches on either side to get through without catching the sideview mirrors. One blinck of attention, and pop, there goes the mirror.

Jon, thanks for that tip on where to find the service manual. That reminds me I once found a similar document inside a washing machine years back, also from Sears. I suspect they are right: most buyers are not engineers and/or tinkerer DYI types. Still, it would be nice to know ahead of time that you've already got the info and don't have to spend hours searching for the information online.

Whirlpool used to hide the servicer's instructions inside the control panel of their washing machines. Between these instructions and the timing diagram stuck to the back of the machine there was sufficient information to not only isolate to the field-replaceable unit (the $350 controller board) but to figure out which component on it (a $0.37 Triac) had failed. It did take a good bit of thinking, however.

With several brands of washers and driers, the reason that the service information is provided is that the parent company has no service people, only contractors who service all brands. So to support them they need to have that information available.They stash it inside the nachine because most folks are way to intimidated to open the cover, and many more simply throw out all of the papers that they don't understand, and also, many just throw out all of the papers that come with an appliance.

Cutting a 12" square hole in the sheet metal is bound to have changed the noise damping. While we've all slammed appliance manufacturers here (myself included), they DO put some attention to noise attenuation. Such a change as described must have caused more noise than before?

Last weekend I installed a new storm door. The instructions and diagrams made the process straightforward except for the step to mount the glass in the door frame. The diagram looked like one of M.C. Escher art prints where the crazy perspective makes you wonder which set of stairs goes in what direction. A video on the company's site let me see how to position a mounting rail on each side. Worked like a charm.

Jon, that description of diagrams for mounting glass in a door frame made me laugh. Escher's art is a good description of just how bad some diagrams are, even the ones I've tried to use just for putting furniture together.

And not just Ikea--every single version and brand of put-together furniture I've put together has been a hassle. For awhile, I was doing it so often I got really good at it, and stopped looking at the Escher-like drawings altogether, since the assembly techniques and fasteners/screws are/were extremely similar.

Could it be a consequence of the (nowadays) lost or nearly lost art of drafting?

As engineering turned towards CAD, some good things were lost. It has been my personal experience that in our engineering firm, the people with the best tridimentional thinking were the old draftsmen from the piping department, followed by the old people from mechanical components. Every year I'm assigned to interview new young engineers as they are selected to be hired. technical drawing interpretation is consistently an area where latter generations tend to fail miserably, even with the (supposedly) help from personal computers and video games.

The bad geometrical design, component placement and lack of respect for repairability seems to be a worldwide trend, and those of us older engineers need to engage in seriously re-train younger people, if we want to be able to keep the good name of engineering as a noble profession.

Interesting comment about mechanical drawing. All freshman at Worcester Polytechnic Institute had to take mechanical drawing and descriptive geometry. I have one of the texts and still refer to it occasionally. The skill to create an engineering drawing by hand has proven a most usefull skill. Eventually WPI decided to cut the mechanical-drawing classes and one on the professors quit in protest. He was the author of the text I have, "Technical Descriptive Geometry," by B. Leighton Wellman. You can buy a used copy at www.abebooks.com for under $4. It's a good book and at that price, a bargain.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

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